Yeah I almost cried partly because it was so unexpected, and partly because I was so desperate dealing with lots of housing instability, and this was one of the first companies that even reached out to me for an interview. I wish I had more of a spine back then because that ended up being hardly the worst of it

In a way I'm glad to have gone through it -- I think it's helped me to be a lot more compassionate in situations when I have any kind of leverage over another person, and it taught me precisely all the wrong ways to treat people in general. Probably most significantly, it showed me that there are major costs in committing to fucked up people, costs that might not be obvious at first. Like you can think you're aware what you're getting yourself into, you can tell yourself it's just for a paycheck, but if they get inside your head at all, you might be dealing with that shit for years. And you can be sure that predators like that are all about getting inside your head